The invention relates to power lawn mowers and particularly to trimmer attachments for power lawn mowers.
Power lawn mowers, particularly riding lawn mowers have greatly reduced time and effort required for lawn mowing. A recognized problem with riding lawn mowers is that it is difficult to mow adjacent to trees and fences and other objects. Typically, a smaller, hand-guided mower or a hand-operated trimmer is used to trim such areas.
Prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,896,488 issued Jan. 30, 1990, discloses a trimmer attachment for a hand-guided lawn mower. The trimmer attachment is rigidly attached to one side of the mower and includes a drive pulley which is driven by a belt engaging a motor-driven pulley. The trimmer can be pivoted from its normal mowing position to a vertical position when the drive belt is removed from the trimmer pulley. Such an arrangement does not lend itself to be readily moved out of the path of an obstacle such as a fence post or the like. It can be pivoted upward when the drive belt is removed and in its pivoted position extends beyond the side of the mower. A further shortcoming of the arrangement disclosed in this patent is that there does not appear to be a convenient way of lengthening the whip line or flail member when it becomes shortened due to wear.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,960,811 issued Nov. 22, 1960, discloses an especially constructed mower deck for supporting a main mower blade in a fixed position and having arcuate slots for movably supporting smaller mower blades. The smaller units are forced to a position partially extending beyond a side edge of the mower deck by means of a spring and are moved to a position under the mower deck against the force of the spring when an obstacle such as a fencepost is encountered. A problem with this arrangement is that a special deck construction is required having arcuate slots and space under the deck to accommodate the smaller blade assembly. Furthermore, the smaller blade assemblies can only partially extend beyond the side edge of the mower deck since their drive shafts are supported in arcuate slots in the deck.